Red Sun Rises
18 December 2008 Red Sun Group has much to be proud of. The company was ranked 365th of all Chinese manufacturers in any industry; 30th of all petrochemical manufacturers in the country; and first among all Chinese pesticide manufacturers for the fifth straight year.
The numbers tell the story of Red Sun’s prominence: the company boasts US $720 million in capital, annual sales of over US $70 million in China and US $57 million in international markets, and it aims to rank among the world’s largest companies. The company currently has 1,582 patents, over 1,000 global registrations, and 5,200 employees spread throughout its 7,500 outlets, 12 production bases, 52 laboratories, four engineering centers, and its engineering technology research institute.
But those numbers are even more impressive when one considers the group’s origin; when Red Sun was born as a company in 1989, it began with US $650 in borrowed money.
Such Great Heights
Yang Shouhai, president of Red Sun Group Co. Ltd., addressed the audience at the China Agro Chem (CAC) show’s International Forum on China Agrochemicals Industry Development held in March, and told the story of the company’s rise from such humble beginnings to its current position high in China’s sky.
In many ways, the same strategies that made Red Sun a success in the early going are still guiding the company’s decisions. Yang Shouhai noted that the goal of Red Sun never was to be the cheapest supplier on the market or win any battles on price alone. Rather, the company has always placed emphasis on the quality of its products, while building out its business both upstream and downstream.
“We cooperate with the multinationals and other companies globally for win-win partnerships,” Yang Shouhai said. “We will supply at an effective cost, with low risk and high quality.”
The “effective” prices that Red Sun can offer, while usually lower than most companies could find locally, are not the the cheapest in China; that is not how Red Sun chooses to compete. The company strikes a balance that allows it to ensure its quality levels are high even by international standards, and invests where it needs to in order to allow its efficiency to keep its prices desirable.
To ensure that the company keeps delivering on its promise of quality, Red Sun has many projects in the works. Yang Shouhai noted that the company is investing more than US $3 billion over the next three years in three product lines: pyridine, chlorpyrifos, and glyphosate. For each product, the company has projects underway to produce 100,000 tons per year. The company also is building out its imidacloprid production by 10,000 tons per year and its paraquat and diquat production by 20,000 tons per year.
The Sky’s The Limit
In line with the national agenda of improving the industry and becoming more environmentally friendly, Red Sun is looking at a number of modern products to add to its offerings. These include biological pesticides, “greener,” less toxic pesticides, eco-fertilizers, and modern seed (the company also ranks as the no. 19 seed company in China).
Yang Shouhai said that one of the company’s strategies for growth was to lead China in outgrowing its need for imports, which are now growing and to a large extent consist of low-toxicity/high-efficacy products or more modern formulations. “We want to eliminate the imports, and manufacture the products ourselves in China,” he said.
The company’s research and development capacity is helping it to do just that. But at the same time, Red Sun has not taken its eyes off the domestic channel, and still strives to improve its network within China.
“We want to have 10,000 shops serving 10,000 towns and 100,000 villages by the end of the 11th 5-Year Plan,” Yang Shouhai told his audience in Shanghai.
If those words were coming from someone else, they might have sounded like the company was aiming a bit too high. But for a company growing from a US $650 loan to become the top player in one of the most competitive industries, in one of the most competitive countries in the world, Red Sun has always aimed high, and could rise even farther.
Get The Newsletter Today!
